Thursday, July 21, 2011

BNIB: almost a keeper

Hi Nick,

I have signed up
for your email updates and interesting articles over the last 3-4 months and
wanted to pass on how much I thoroughly enjoy these. I have always had a
keen interest in fine watches as well as the history behind fine time
pieces.

Part of the reason of me sending an email was to ask about buying
fine watches online. I did research some of your articles talking
about buying watches where the dealer won't divulge serial numbers and
any history of the watch.

My brother lives in the States and is interested
in purchasing a Panerai watch over there. There is one online as new with
boxes and papers with a private dealer. My question is, with new watches how
do they turn up with sellers that are not authorized sellers of
new watches like Panerai initially? Secondly how does the warranty
apply in this situation? Are there things to check to make sure everything
is above board?

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Best
regards,

Richard

Dear Richard,

Thank you for your email.

Before I answer your question, let me
share with you a very personal story.

A couple of years ago we met a guy who
became sort of a friend. Mike was the nicest guy ever,
very helpful and extremely polite. He loved my wife's cherry strudels and
in return he would fix my letters for grammar and
spelling. A fair deal!

As an accountant by trade he worked
hard and saved his pennies even harder. Happy man - except for one detail: for
some strange reason, no matter how hard he tried, he was
still a single man. He really wanted to find that very
special soul but for one reason or another, it just
did not happen.

One late evening, Mike knocked on our
door, announced. Obviously he was in a hurry and he
said he needed my help. So we let him in.

He quickly logged into my computer and
said:

"Nick, here are 3 ladies I've narrowed
down from a selection of 12,000. A doctor from Novosibrisk, an
architect from Petropavlovsk and a painter from a small village in
Ukraine. Which one should I marry?"

To say that all 3 looked extremely
beautiful would be understatement.

But that was not the Mike we knew, so
I was curious to find out what made him pick those 3
particular ladies? And he told us: all three were exactly
the same height, same age and same weight. For Mike, those numbers were the most
important search criteria. The only problem he had is which one
to pick?

And this is why he needed my
help.

Now, let's just pause the story here
for a second. If you were in my shoes, you would probably do your best to
convince Mike not to rush with his decision. You would argue that
there is the possibility of significant misinterpretation when deciding about a person purely on
low quality .jpg fifteen minutes after midnight, and that height and weight have very
little to do with heart and soul, and all that stuff. That's what any
reasonable person and friend would say!

But not me.

Without a nanosecond of hesitation,
without even the slightest bit of guilt or doubt, as certain as only
a watchmaker could be, I pointed to the photo of the artist by the name of
Yelena.

"She is the one, Mike. You can't go
wrong with a painter."

And so he did.

Yelena arrived in Sydney in what I
would call a BNBIB condition - a brand new Barbie
in a box, with original papers, certificates, inner and outer boxes, hang tags,
original receipt, spotless, conservatively described as 10/10. She would suit
both a novice enthusiast or a seasoned
collector. She was painfully perfect, with that
heavenly Slavic accent - all those shs, tchs, ljs, zszs, which makes the sweetest French girls
sound like Darth Vader.

There was only one bit missing: she
came with no instruction manual and Mike could not figure out how to
get her ticking - no matter how hard he tried.

So what is my point, you may
ask?

Well, buying online could be tricky.
There is no guarantee that you'll get what you want and there is even
less guarantee that you'll like what you get.

For the same reason you cannot blame
Yelena for being Yelena, you cannot blame a Panerai for being too large,
too heavy, too expensive or even fake.

I hope this goes without saying, but
when it comes to recommending an online product, I am completely
useless.

As Roxette said, "...listen to YOUR
heart - there is nothing else you can do"

Regards,

N.

PS. Mike is now happily married to an
Aussie mum with 4 kids. He lost few dollars in trade, but he
kept the receipt. My wife still makes the best cherry
strudels in the world, and as before, I still need someone to
fix my grammar. As what happened to Yelena, I can not
disclose for legal reasons.